Terms of Service

1. Who these terms are between

HushOS is open-source software that anyone can run. This instance (the “Service”) is operated by HushOS, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the “Operator”, “we”). By creating an account you agree to these terms with the Operator, not with the HushOS project or its contributors.

2. Your account

You need a verified email address, a password of at least 12 characters, and a 24-word recovery phrase to use the Service. Your password is used only on your device and is never sent to the Service. Your recovery phrase is the only way to reset a forgotten password without losing your account key.

• You are responsible for keeping your password and recovery phrase private.
• We cannot recover, reset, or bypass your password or recovery phrase. If you lose both, the data protected by your account key is permanently inaccessible.
• You must be old enough to enter into this agreement where you live.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Break the law, or store or share material that is illegal where you or the Operator are located.
• Attack, probe, overload, or interfere with the Service or other people’s accounts.
• Impersonate someone else, or create accounts by automated means.
• Distribute malware, spam, or unsolicited messages.

Anyone you share with, by link or by account, can report what you shared. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, remove content that was reported and found to break them, and, where the law requires or permits, pass material to the relevant authority. Where reasonable, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond. Nothing you have not shared can be seen or reported by anyone, including us.

4. Your content

Anything you store in the Service remains yours. You grant the Operator only the rights needed to run the Service for you: to store, back up, and transmit your data to you and to people you choose to share it with. Content protected by your account key is not readable by the Operator. When you share something, you are responsible for who you share it with: a link opens for anyone who holds it, and stopping a share or a link cannot take back what someone already downloaded.

5. Paid plans

Every account starts on a free allowance. The Operator may offer paid plans that add storage. Paid plans do not change how your data is protected; every plan is encrypted the same way.

• Who bills you. Purchases are made through Polar Software, Inc. (“Polar”), which sells the plan to you as merchant of record. Polar collects payment, calculates and collects any sales tax or VAT, and issues your invoices. Polar’s own terms apply to the purchase itself. The Operator never receives your card details.
• Billing periods. Plans renew monthly or yearly, as chosen at checkout, and are charged to your saved payment method at the start of each period. Prices are shown at checkout, with tax where it applies. If a price changes, your current plan keeps its price until you are told otherwise, with at least 30 days’ notice.
• Changing plans. You can switch plans at any time from Billing. The change applies immediately and the prorated difference is charged, or credited, to your saved payment method. Your bank may ask you to confirm the charge.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time from Billing or from Polar’s customer portal. Your plan stays active until the end of the period you have paid for, and you can resume before then. When it ends, your allowance returns to the free tier. Nothing is deleted and your content stays readable; uploads pause while you are over your allowance.
• Failed payments. If a renewal cannot be charged, Polar tells you by email and retries over the following weeks. If payment still fails, the plan ends and your allowance returns to the free tier.
• Refunds. Refunds are handled by Polar under its refund policy. Contact the Operator first and we will raise it with Polar. Nothing here removes rights you have under the law where you live, including any right to cancel a purchase within a set period.
• Deleting your account cancels any active plan immediately. Unless the law where you live requires it, the remaining part of a paid period is not refunded.

5a. Invites and affiliates

Every account has an invite link. When someone creates an account through it, both of you receive extra storage, up to the limits shown on the Invite friends page, and the inviter receives more if that person later pays for a plan. Rewards are storage, never money, and they stay as long as both accounts exist. Creating accounts to invite yourself, or otherwise gaming the invite, is a breach of these terms and we may withdraw the storage it earned. Affiliates are creators the Operator enrols separately, under a written agreement that governs their commission.

6. Availability and changes

The Service is provided as is. It is under active development, and features may change. We aim for high availability but do not guarantee it, and we may perform maintenance with little notice. Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.

7. Ending the agreement

You can permanently delete your account at any time from Account settings. Deletion cancels any paid plan, then removes your profile, personal workspace, storage allowance, encryption-key bundles, and sessions, and cannot be undone. We may end the agreement if you break these terms or if the Service is discontinued, in which case we will give you reasonable notice to export your data where we can.

8. Liability

To the extent permitted by law, the Operator is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of data that results from a lost password or recovery phrase. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

9. Open source

HushOS is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. These terms govern your use of this hosted instance only. Your rights to the software itself come from that licence.

10. Updates to these terms

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will update the date above and, where practical, notify you by email before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the new terms.

See also the Privacy Policy, which explains what data the Service holds.